


equinox

by leaveanote



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 6000 Years of Pining (Good Omens), Anxious Crowley (Good Omens), First Time Together, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Romance, Sex, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), they're soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-31 12:49:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20115361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leaveanote/pseuds/leaveanote
Summary: Here in the South Downs cottage, Crowley has more than he ever thought he would: the two of them, safe, and he gets to live alongside Aziraphale every day. He still can't bring himself to say it, though, still finds himself wanting, doesn't want to drag the angel down with the mess of his love, doesn't want to ruin what they have.Aziraphale, however, is getting tired of Crowley staring longingly off into the night sky, and confronts him.There is more of a balance here than Crowley thought.***The angel smiles. That crinkling kindness, that laugh in the corner of him, bright and deathless and pure, and Crowley’s resolve is melting. Aziraphale does remove his glasses now, fingers brushing his temples, folds them into his own pocket, pocketing Crowley’s last defense. Neither of them looks away. The night sounds clutter around them, the sway of elderly oak branches, the gentle scuttle of a village turning itself into bed, reinventing for the next day, the caw and croon of things with feathers, searching for love. A knowing hum in an ancient throat, leaning in.





	equinox

By rights, it should be no easier for Crowley to see the stars in the South Downs cottage than it was back in London. He can see in the dark. There is no calm of night for him, no settling blanket of dimgray catharsis, Hell was ashen and the temporary shade caused by the spin of the earth can’t compare to it. The world takes on a shadow, that’s all, but his vision cuts through it, relentless, restless.

But it feels different out here. 

He comes almost every night, when the angel’s busying about his books. A clearing, where the hilltop stops and the sky spreads across the meadows and the town below. A swell of sea in the offing, the closest thing to eternity on earth. That, and them.

Out here. A place separate from their old separate homes. Crowley’s been good at shedding skins, though not as good as he tells himself he is. The other, not so much. And yet. A place just far enough out of the city, from the site of hurt and headquarters. A cottage with a goddamn thatched roof that should be, by all rights, twee, but it sits so squat and perfect atop the grassy hilltop on the outskirts of town. A place where night sinks hard into the soil, and the stars are a startling in the sky, a silver shimmer.

The clearing is close enough to the cottage that the warm light from the library nearly creeps in, goldening the grass, but it’s far enough away. A place to exhale, to let himself shudder with the want that’s suffocating him, a twisting thing, smokecloud clogging inside him. That, perhaps, is the hardest part. Were it only an emotional want, the unbelievable unspoken ache of  _ you understand me, you know me, you see me and you still want to share your life with me _ , that, Crowley thinks, he could bear. Were it only physical, the pressing, prickling need caught up in the curve of the angel’s neck when he reads, the lingering look when he walks past an open door and catches Crowley’s eye as he’s examining his hair, and worse, worse, when they’re resting on the sofa, each with a book (that pretense, Crowley has abandoned, there’s only so much he can hold at once), and the angel’s hand falls so close to his on the cushion, absent-minded, nonchalant, and those inches of space become hot and eons-wide. Not just a human, a sexual want, then, but the need to get  _ closer _ .  _ Why is there this space here. We come so close to touching. Whatever’s left must be deliberate. You must want it there. I can’t close it. What can I do to get you to want it closed? Nothing, there’s nothing else. You know me, you see me, and that, that you don’t want. This is as close as I’ll get _ . Crowley tells himself it’s enough.

The cottage was a choice, Crowley knows, they both pretended to make out of convenience, better stick together just in case they come for us again.  _ Let him believe it. He must, he must, he would never have left his bookshop otherwise.  _ Oh, the angel was so fond of that bookshop it made Crowley’s heart pinch in his chest, a thing it had no rights doing. Adam had set it right again but there was a char that wouldn’t leave, Aziraphale said, and Crowley, well. The few times Crowley had had to set foot in it since, the memory came to him like a choking thing. 

That moment, that burning, that, that was hell. 

He hasn’t spoke of it. They miracled plants and the few possessions he’d had in his flat, as well as the entire bookshelves from the shop into the cottage (they’d prepared it with a library, without asking the other. It had been in the plans from the beginning), and they’ve been here six months. In the moments he had been back in the shop, it enveloped him.

How can a void be such a pressing thing? Knives on all sides, torture only a human could come up with, but isn’t that what it was? A mortal thing, a loss like that. It should’ve been. Crowley wasn’t prepared. He’d always thought he’d be there, no, he never let himself think about it. A world without Aziraphale wasn’t a possibility, not a thought to entertain.  _ We’re not friends _ , that, he’d said before, a hundred times, and he’d returned each time after. But the ash-crush empty, the astronomic pain of real loss, no, he can’t, he can’t.

_ There’s no way of thinking of it without confronting how much he means to you.  _

The half-year has been spectacular, really. A stolen thing. The world spins and Crowley’s yelling at a garden while Aziraphale rearranges his collection, ventures into the village bookshop for hidden gems and there’s good wine and a gramophone, and it should be enough. It’s more than he ever hoped for, than he allowed himself to want. 

There is one bed. Crowley falls asleep in it furiously some nights. It’s untouched by the angel. 

He comes out here to breathe. Count the constellations. Because even though it shouldn’t be clearer out here, it is. The city stars were just as bright, but surrounded by the chilly glow of screens and bulbs and ashy heat-things from pavement. Concrete teeth scraping at the velvet-night, gnawing. Skyscrapers had been Crowley’s idea, he pretends not to regret them.

The stars are unforgiving, out here, in the not-dark behind his glasses. The stories the humans wrote upon them. Eternal chases, lovers reaching for each other across the cosmos, heroes frozen in conquest, a celestial pedestal. It’s all burning gas and ash, anyway, but Crowley can’t help but see the stories in them, and it makes him ache, but. 

At least it’s something else making him ache.

Every night, or every night Crowley can get away without being asked. Breathe in the expanse of it. Feel small for once. The weight of the world is lifted, if only for a few precious centuries, probably at best, but  _ don’t think about it, don’t think about it, breathe now _ . Aziraphale is inside. He’s safe. He’s not burning. He’s lipdeep in cocoa, curled in tartan, in a shared place with a thatched roof. He’ll smile at you when you walk back in --  _ no, don’t think about that either _ . Not the kind crinkle of his eyes, not the concerned timbre of his voice when he asks if you’ve gotten cold out there, sneer and say you don’t get cold, scoff and flash a smile. 

When, in fact, Crowley is frozen. Not a stationary kind, though, not a steady thing. A torture of it, blooddeep chill, begging to be warmed.

The morning yawns, pinkgrey and gold, shuffling the leaves, and Aziraphale sets water for tea. Crowley slinks to their garden before the summernoon heat comes, shouts at the blooms. He trims the ripe things, the fragrant rosemary, the thin leaves of mint. Round globes of tomatoes, coming in nice, bay leaf and basil, the trembling lilacs, when Aziraphale calls for them. He brings them to the angel without a word, and Aziraphale’s eyes crinkle and Crowley’s sad heart soars. Aziraphale uses them in tea, mostly, but he’ll bring some round to the baker in the village every week or so, as the garden is very much flourishing, and she’ll make the loveliest creations out of them, scones and cupcakes and pasties that Crowley does. Not. delight in watching Aziraphale eat. Crumbles falling over the pages of his book, into his lap, no, definitely not. Something Crowley crafted from soil, alchemized into sweetness, clinging to an angel’s wet lip.

And then the sun sets just like that. Minor miracles here, maybe, a devious prank on a cruel person down in the village for the fun of it there, but their time now centers on the upkeep of their little cottage. Aziraphale pores over his prophecies, to be certain, searching for any warning signs, but he also spends most of his time tending to his collection, planning trips for them to take in a near, nebulous sort of future in which he can squirrel away more mythic tomes, and Crowley tends to the garden, and lives in his orbit, drawing nearer than ever before. They haven’t strayed far from the cottage yet. They plan to, but for Crowley, the rolling days within these walls are riot enough. A wild quiet of a blessing, the real kind, something more of a gift than God could invent. He doesn’t know what the angel’s thinking. Why he hasn’t left yet. He won’t ask. 

The weeks pass in a sort of clenching torment. How good it is. How clean the days. How close they’ve come. And still, this space, insurmountable.

Crowley stares up hard into the universe and lets himself ache and ache and ache. He doesn’t call on Her to help him. She must know. Perhaps She cursed him with this, but no, she’s nowhere near creative enough. More than that, this feels like Crowley’s own fault. Even She wouldn’t curse an angel like that, to be loved by this burnt, wretched thing. 

“Casseopeia. Andromeda, and is that the Hydra, there?”  _ Oh.  _ That cozy, home of a voice. It makes him feel so good before he remembers to flinch away. 

Tonight is the night, then. Soft footfalls crunching the grass, and Aziraphale is at his shoulder, a foot of space between them. 

Crowley turns an arched brow.

“I do read, you know.” 

Crowley manages a soft smile, a thundering heart. If only he didn’t need one, the vestigial organ, a giveaway. He doesn’t, but he’s accustomed to it now. Gives an eye to the storm of him. Let it pound, let the rest of him move easier for it, he hopes, he hopes. 

“We’re as old as the stars,” Aziraphale murmurs, furrowsoft face turned up to them. 

“Older,” Crowley reminds him. A bitten-off word.  _ We came first. I had to, to create them. Back when my wings were as white as yours.  _

“Do you feel it?” he asks quietly. “I do, sometimes.” He swallows. Crowley listens to it, woefully, wistfully, the wet of him pushed down a throat. “It’s a long thing, all of mortality. So many stories.”

“I do, sometimes, yeah.”  _ But then again I haven’t lived at all yet, for the wanting of you. This wretched thing. Millennia, teetering on the precipice. There is another life I want. I want this to be prologue. I’ll take minutes of it if that’s all I’d get. More than I deserve. _

“You come out here often,” the angel says. Insects chatter, creak into the night. Small wings, surrounding them. Almost a taunt. 

He noticed. Shitfuckinghell. A gap for answer. Maybe he’ll see it as aloof, maybe it’ll seem like a demon thing to do. Crowley wants to crack a sneer, but the truth is too close beneath his skin, clawing at him. 

“Crowley?” His name comes quiet. He’ll never tire of hearing that voice say his name, a bewitching thing every time.  _ Name me, name me, I’m more yours than anything else I’ve ever been. At least, I want to be. Let me be _ . “Are you,” and here the angel falters, Crowley can hear him gather himself to carry on, and then he does. “ -- tired of living with me?”

And something cracks, splinters, the very question evidence that the angel’s heart is galaxies away. He’s living in a different story, to read that,  _ that,  _ in this.

“No.” He tries to push it out, tries to spit it,  _ make it a joke, scoff, lighten this,  _ but the broken creeps into his voice instead.

“You can tell me, you know,” and there’s a tremble in Aziraphale’s voice, and Crowley realizes with a wrenching in his gut that oh,  _ he really thinks I don’t want to be here _ . How,  _ how  _ can he be so stupid, but of course it’s because I’ve only succeeded at keeping him away, what did I expect, my fucking Heaven,  _ have I hurt him. _ “I know I must be. Far less interesting? Than the company you are used to keeping, in the long run.” It’s dangerous to look over, eye contact might betray an unformed truth, Crowley needs to come up with something palatable, something smaller than the magnitude of this, this sprawling mess he is. But he can’t help himself, he nearly never can, and he glances and  _ oh _ . The angel’s gazing up into the night, eyes starbright and steady. Like he’s prepared for this. “We’re here for, well. Safekeeping, as it were. And I thought we’d done a good job of making this a pleasant place for us both, but sometimes I look at you and it’s like you’re suffocating, and I don’t want to be the reason for it.”

_But_ _you are, you are, but only for the very antithesis of what you’re imagining_, has Crowley actually ruined this somehow? Has he been this obvious?

“Days go by and I feel like we’re quite comfortable together, but then I see you come out here, I see the -- the tightness in your spine -- ” a clench of the fist. A tic in his jaw, a furrow in his brow, and something, oh, something inside Crowley is untwining. “And I think. What have I done? You never  _ stayed _ .” A bark of a laugh, not like Aziraphale’s laugh at all, and could it be, could there be something of this suffering living in him too? Can’t be, not like this. Must be guilt only.  _ He’s getting tired of you.  _ Sets it on you to take the burden off himself, that must be it.  _ He never has before _ . He’s never meant to, at least. A wrestling thing. Crowley’s accustomed to it. Lived alongside it this long.  _ No, angel, I never stayed. I wanted to. Oh, I wanted to dig roots into you, wanted to plant myself in your stale books and your terrible jokes but I couldn’t let myself. They’d kill you. And you, oh, the fool that you are but you’d see. You’d know. How could I let myself think I could live with you, and you wouldn’t know?  _ “You  _ migrate _ ,” Aziraphale continues, like he’s practiced this, thought about it over and over, “you have adventures, you meet wondrous people -- I, I’ve always enjoyed my travels, but I like a home to come to, I like to come to roost, and I haven’t meant to keep you here when you’d rather wander. I haven’t meant to keep you here just for me.” 

A wind slips through them from the east, first crossing Aziraphale, then Crowley, and oh,  _ I can smell him on it _ , stronger than usual, buoyed by blasted air of all things, wingchoked and expansive, and he’s damp pages and echoes of fresh herbs and a lingering sweetness from the blueberry scone made from seed a demon ripened and then there’s the him of it all, a crackle of a spark older than electricity, starstuff and feather.  _ I’d find you anywhere, a beacon in a cacophony of sky, until the moment I couldn’t.  _ Don’t think about it. It’s too late, it’s trembling out of him, breaching the careful shade spread of him. 

“Aziraphale,” says the demon, eyes behind mirrordark glass, turned to the stars. No other words come. There’s too many of them, there’s not enough.  _ How, how do I put this into words? You made a universe of longing out of me. I made many of these stars, but those, those are dead things, remnants, aftershock. What you write in me is a world of living constellations. Stories I don’t know how to tell. You make myth in me. You make meaning, there is nothing else.  _ He shakes his head. “You’re wrong,” he manages, this and this alone. Perhaps the worst possible response, but it chokes out of him and the angel holds on to it.

“Then what  _ is  _ it?” A pushy ask, almost a nag. He’s frustrated, but there’s a shade of desperation there, something pink and soft, and the breaking thing in Crowley is loose inside him, clattering his defenses, gnawing at his halfshod armor. “Please,” Aziraphale says at last, and this, Crowley has never, never been able to deny.

He lowers his gaze from the heavens. Sets it on the being before him, so much holier than anything Crowley’s ever had his hands on.  _ Would it burn me? To touch you _ . An almost idle thought amid the careening chaos swirling through him, a familiar one. He’s asked himself this since the time he first learned your name.  _ Would it burn you.  _ That one is not a question, not up for debate.  _ I’m a cast-out thing. You can never burn like I burned, I won’t let you. I’m not worth it, I can’t ruin you. I’d never survive it. _

“Angel,” he says, his voice hoarse with all the wordless things he won’t let himself say. “I wish you wouldn’t ask me that.” Aziraphale’s face is open and odd, a tension in his mouth. He’s flexing his fingers, like they’re aching to grab.  _ You can’t carry this. I can’t let you _ .  _ I’d bury you.  _

“Why not?” Another push, indignant now. “Crowley,” he says, and he’s stern with it, and  _ oh _ . “I’m stronger than you think I am.”  _ I know you are. You’re better than anything I could imagine, you’re good, you’re  _ good,  _ in the way that matters _ . “And I want the truth from you.” 

“Aziraphale,” he says again, an opening he doesn’t have a following to, only hands spread open. Not too far away, the sea crashes. Ancient things wash up on the shore to die, leave shells of themselves, offered up like cupped palms to the sky.  _ It’s too much to carry. Has it become at last too much? I need a safe place to put it down. It can’t be you. It can’t be you. It can’t -- _

The angel steps in front of him. The space between them, halved. Crowley should remember to stop breathing so the pant of his lungs won’t betray him. It’s too late, he’s huffing it, the sweet smell of halo and pages, too close.  _ I’m most human when I’m with you.  _ A useless discard of a thought. Nothing will undo the plague of him, the fall. 

Aziraphale is staring, hard. Through the glasses, into Crowley’s full-flared serpent eyes, the yellow creeping past any white left in them. He reaches up a soft hand and Crowley thinks he’s removing the glasses but no, he goes to touch the demon marking instead, the emblazoned part of him, defiant and helpless and wicked and unchanged. Not with a knuckle, but a fingerpad, the index, like he’s making a selection. To choose this, and it’s so gentle Crowley can’t believe he doesn’t let out a sob. It doesn’t burn. There’s heat there, but the kind sort, firelight in frost, the sun on a snowbank, a caress that means  _ you can thaw at last. _

Crowley’s lips do part, expecting some defensive part of him to come up with a stammer or a snark, but Aziraphale brings his mouth close instead, and everything Crowley is has gone blank at once.  _ This isn’t happening. I won’t let. I can’t. Do it. Write this upon me, please. Do it, make me something new. Undo this, undo this, let me out, let me be this instead _ .  _ Help me carry this. _

“What are you doing?” he hears himself say, stupid and so soft with want. His breath ghosts over those sweet pink lips, no crumb on them now, bare, waiting,  _ I want to cover them. I want them on me. All over me. Speak new stories into me. Take me apart, it would be better than this. Eat me alive. Do what you want with me.  _

“You must know I don’t want you to leave, don’t you?” Aziraphale looks into him. They’re so even in height, it’s always been a curse. It would have been easier if he could gaze up at him, gaze down at him, but from here it’s too sharp, the parts of them that are even, the parts of them that never will be. Binary star, never meeting, it’ll destroy them both.  _ It’ll destroy him _ . 

“I -- well, you couldn’t possibly -- ”

“Crowley.” He’s closer now, somehow, there can be no mistaking it, the way he shifts his hips, his other hand raised now, ghosting near Crowley’s waist,  _ who taught you that? What worlds of you do I still have yet to learn? What are you, if you want this too? Tell me, teach me, I’ll spend the rest of forever studying what you want from this planet, from this place. From me, from me. What could I give you? Only everything I am. _

“Aziraphale.” Crowley is a battle he wants himself to lose.  _ I can’t. He wants you. He wants you. He wants you. I’ll destroy him. I don’t care. I’ll take whatever he offers, a crumb and it will be enough. I can’t risk it. I can’t lose him.  _ “The last time I asked you to come with me, the last time I said  _ together  _ \-- ”  _ we could run away. We could go off. They’d never find us. And then you -- oh --  _ “you  _ spit  _ it back at me. And you were right to!”  _ You were right and I’m a wretched thing _ . I can’t have you getting close enough to me to fall.” A broken creak of a thing, that sentence. He never thought he’d beg, but please,  _ please _ , step back.  _ I can’t trust myself to take care of you. To protect you from this staggering, dragging, downfall want of mine. I go too fast for you.  _

And the angel --  _ oh _ . The angel  _ smiles _ . That crinkling kindness, that laugh in the corner of him, bright and deathless and pure, and Crowley’s resolve is melting. Aziraphale does remove his glasses now, fingers brushing his temples, folds them into his own pocket, pocketing Crowley’s last defense. Crowley stares at him,  _ I can’t _ , but neither of them look away. The night sounds clutter around them, the sway of elderly oak branches, the gentle scuttle of a village turning itself into bed, reinventing for the next day, the caw and croon of things with feathers, searching for love. A knowing hum in an ancient throat, leaning in. 

“I was  _ not  _ right to turn you away. I was only terrified, and that’s not the same thing. And a fool!” The smile is that of someone who has already arrived at a conclusion. Who needs no more convincing. Who has —  _ made a choice _ . “I’ve been tempting humans for a thousand years. And you, my darling, have been blessing them. We are something else entirely.” He says this part soft and serious a spell. “And now, Crowley, we survived the wrath of Satan himself. You walked through Heaven, and you didn’t fall this time. I strode through Hell and back for you. You’ve protected me, cared for me, looked after me, for how many centuries? You don’t burn me, not like that. You are not the danger.” A hard look here. “You,” he says, undoing with these words what Crowley’s been carrying since,  _ oh _ , since, since. “Are not the danger. We’re on our side. I know you know it, let yourself know it again, my darling. Crowley,” he says, a fingerprint away, stomachs nearly touching when Crowley breathes and oh, he’s breathing now, trying to remember how to inhabit this body he’s wore for millennia because this, this is a new thing and he doesn’t know how to walk in it. “Crowley, if anything in creation is truly holy? If it’s not this,  _ I don’t want it. _ ”

“Angel,” he goes to say, but Aziraphale has, at last, closed the space between them, and Crowley’s world ends, remakes itself. The kiss is soft, and then it isn’t. Aziraphale’s hands move to touch his waist and Crowley can feel each finger through his layers of black, pressing, pulling him closer until there’s no space between them at all and Aziraphale’s mouth is opening,  _ if this is all I get it’s enough,  _ goes the wretched-dazed demonbrain,  _ this -- oh, with your tongue like that, touching me, the sweet of you, that old-tea taste, the graze of uneven teeth -- this, this is so much more than enough,  _ but it doesn’t end, it goes on instead, a hand coming up to thread through red curls gone ragged long, and it feels like dying, it feels like daybreak, it feels like a story he never lets himself tell, and then Crowley’s kissing back, a balance of them,  _ a balance of them _ , his mouth on the angel’s mouth, _ take all of me,  _ a wet clutching,  _ don’t let him feel the desperation in it, you’ll scare him _ , but Aziraphale’s kissing desperate too, stepping himself somehow ever closer until there’s only cloth between them, lips parting, a messy dance of tongues and it  _ should _ be embarrassing, it should be silly, a strange human thing but instead it’s all theirs, theirs, an opening, a start. 

He pulls away and behind him sprawls the entirety of the universe, dead stars and an abundance of void, but Crowley sees eternity in the sparkle of his eyes, the damp bitten parts of his mouth, and when Aziraphale reaches for his hands, he gives them, the voice inside him quiet, astonished,  _ sated _ . Or not, it’ll never be quite that, there’s never was such a thing as enough here, but finally, finally fed. 

“Will you stay with me?” Aziraphale asks, a muss of hair, a lovely flush to his cheeks, and there’s somehow still a question in his voice and Crowley realizes  _ he still doesn’t know _ . Seems impossible, laughable, when it’s the only thing in this world of which Crowley is sure.

“The only reason I haven’t said it yet is because there’s too much of it to say.” Crowley’s shaking his head, watching bright eyes brighten, glowing things in the night. Another breeze gusts through them and, giddily, he can’t pick apart their scents.  _ It’s happening. Don’t -- No. Look at him. Look at the wanting, oh help, the wanting of him. Give it to him like you’ll give him anything. Let it happen. Do it.  _ “I wouldn’t know where to begin.” 

“Here,” says the angel, urgent and at once, squeezing his arm too-tight through his jacket. “Here, here, please. Start here. Tell me.”

“I love you, Aziraphale.” He lets the words dive from him before he can catch them, and then they’re there, piercing the world, living outside him, and he can feel the weight lift, a shimmering rising thing of it. It’s not even all of it, how could it be, such a small  _ human  _ word, but it’s a start, it’s the  _ start _ , and Aziraphale sighs like a weight from him has risen too and this time Crowley’s the one to catch him in a kiss, to give over to his hunger and find it met just the same, to let himself fill his hands with the sacrament of him, a soft cheek, a fistful of hair at the root, the welcoming curve of a waist, devour him with hands instead of shaded eyes and  _ oh, oh  _ so this, this is what it is to live.

Mouths move under moonlight, almost idly now, though everything of Crowley is alit there’s also a numbness to it --  _ I don’t have to hide anymore?  _ oh, that’ll take some getting used to. Aziraphale likes to scrape his teeth over Crowley’s thin bottom lip,  _ am I enough for you?  _ oh, that’ll be another question entirely, don’t think about it now, focus, collect every bit of this, who knows how long we have, a body, warm and sure, stilled against his, moving soft enough to rustle in the night.

“Let’s go inside, my darling.” Aziraphale doesn’t let go of his hand, leads him back to their cottage through the grass and the breeze, leaving the splay of stars and ocean behind, bringing him towards another sort of eternity ( _ don’t hope at it, don’t take on too much at once, you’ll overflow _ ). That numbness a saving thing, perhaps. They cross the threshold, fingers intertwined, christening it something new now and the warmth of it envelops them, the smell of them both, the home they’ve each been making apart, together, the cozy cheergold beacon of it, an oasis in the night. And after Aziraphale reaches behind him to shut the door, lock the rest of the world out, he moves his hand up again, his palm against the hollow of Crowley’s cheek. He’s still not burning, neither of them are, this is becoming a real thing and the want, the want of it, it  _ billows _ .

“I love you,” says the angel, and he doesn’t say it quiet. Says it like a statement, like a damned proclamation, a fact, and it is irrevocably clear he has,  _ help _ , he has thought this before.

“I thought -- I couldn’t let myself -- ” Crowley has to explain, but it stumbles out of him, tripping over that  _ kiss _ , over the need to do it again, again,  _ how are we not touching now, how do you bear it, does this mean we have time? Do you think we have time, do you want to spend it like this, with me? _

“I  _ know _ ,” Aziraphale says insistently, and he does, he understands. “I couldn’t let you either. I couldn’t let myself -- they would have destroyed you.” And when something flickers across Crowley’s eyes, the cobweb he carries, a choking thing, a constant, the angel continues, “they are the evil here, my darling. And we survived it. And I know as well as you that we don’t know how long we’ve got, could be years or more millennia, but there’s little more that we can do in the meantime and I do  _ not  _ plan on simply surviving from here on out. Not when I know you want this too.”

And Crowley lets himself say what he hasn’t been allowed to say for far too long, “ _ thank you, _ ” a breathy thing, a release, “thank you, thank you, you, you, you saving thing. You precious fucking creature. I have loved you inside myself for so long I’m not sure how to live with it outside my body, but I’m going to learn if it kills me.”

“It won’t, my darling,” he is a gathering, a steady thing, rubbing Crowley’s arms like he knew they were cold, though it isn’t from the night. “I won’t let it,” and Crowley kisses him and it feels like crying out, like he can feel the turning of the earth at last, like the remnants of a nova, pulled together millennia later, to create something fresh and beautiful where nothing was before. 

“I love you,” Crowley says, a sure thing now, almost angry at it -- if it could be this, he would have done it ages ago, but they needed to stop the world ending to remake it, after all --  _ be here, Crowley, be now, let it happen _ , and he says it again, the words lost in the other’s smile. “I love you,” murmured against a cheek that gives when his mouth moves into it, “I love you,” quieter now, to the hollow of a throat he’s longed for since Eden, “I love you,” in that divot in the center of him, before the chest flares out. “I can’t stop saying it.”  _ Not now, now that you’ve opened the dam of me, let me overrun. I hope you know what you’re in for, I hope you meet me halfway. _

“Don’t you dare,” and this is pushed through gritted teeth, a frantic energy, bottleblack jacket clenched in grasping fists and Crowley’s not the one going fast this time. The anxiety still sears through him but there’s something much louder in it, hope, and a twist of finally fullyfelt want, hot in his belly, curling. “Oh, my darling,” all wet breath and ache of it, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry I kept you waiting, I’m sorry I wouldn’t go with you, I only ever wanted to keep you safe,” a cupped palm on a bladesharp cheekbone, and he doesn’t pull away, holds him tighter for it.  _ All my edges, you embrace.  _

“I only wanted to keep  _ you _ safe, damn it,” but it’s said through a helpless sort of smile. The cottage light is goldenwarm, humming with crawling plants and plump succulents doing their growing, the fruits going ripe in the bowl, nourishing things, and them now, sprouting. 

“We’re the safest we’re going to be, now,” says the angel, “let’s be together, then, please?” and Crowley goes to kiss his mouth again but then gives a laugh that comes out part growl because oh, for  _ someone’s  _ sake, can that be what he feels pressed up against his thigh? He’s learning to move in a world rewritten but this, this he had only ever let himself dream of when he hated himself the most, his own tight, frantic fist licked rough enough to manage, the shame of earthly want for such  _ god _ damn divinity.

“Anything,” a tongue flicked out on a swollen lip, hips rolled up to meet him, “anything you want of me. You already know it’s yours.”

“ _ Crowley _ ,” and it’s almost a  _ whine _ , the wanton thing, the blessed hedonist, here’s the demon trying to adjust to a love at last requited, and here’s the angel rutting frantic at his thigh, and for fuck’s sake, perhaps they’re really not so different in the end. 

“Do you want this?” Crowley asks, he shifts, pressing that precious plump thigh between his own legs, and there’s no mistaking the meaning now, but it’s not just that, never, it’s  _ do you want me? All of me? Is this a thing you want to try? Do you trust me? Not just the aura of me or the thought of me or the memory. Do you trust my body, a wicked thing made for temptation. Do you trust it to hold yours and only love it, love it the way it should be loved? Do you want that? Am I wrong for it? Have I proved myself? _

“Yes,” Aziraphale’s saying already, “yes,  _ yes, yes _ ,” and there’s no way he hasn’t thought about  _ this _ either, from that blaze in his eyes, and  _ he’s making a mockery of everything ever I’ve been afraid of _ , a smile playing at his mouth, and he drags Crowley to the bedroom, to the bed he’s never slept in, and he sits on it primly for only a moment, eyebrow raised,  _ no, no, he’s showing me he sees my fear, and -- and -- he loves me anyway… . _ and then Crowley can’t hold back anymore.

He falls upon the angel, a meteor crashing to earth, a scattering of scrap from elsewhere, rushing here to be remade. There’s no sulfur for him this time, only gentling touches and ceaseless kisses and murmured promises, the curling want mingling with the heady  _ love  _ of it.

How can a cheek be so soft? What a strange invention, these plush folds of flesh beneath chin, the divot above a lip.

“I want to learn this body of yours.” A thought he’d keep locked in a suffering place, this time it’s earnest, nose to nose, cloudwhite hair shifting on a blessedly tartan pillow, met with a little moan, an invitation, an arching of the back. “I want to know what you like, angel, how to make you feel good. I want this odd human thing to belong to us.” 

Aziraphale draws him closer, untying, undoing, shaking off the still chilly black jacket, the slip of scarf, that armor of him, baring him piece by piece.

“Have you ever?” and the way he asks it, Crowley knows Aziraphale has. This doesn’t hurt, of course he has, the hedonist,  _ and there’s no one else who can give you what I can, if you let me, no one else on this planet with as many tomorrows as I’ll give you. Take them all, please. _

“How many lifetimes ago,” answers Crowley truthfully, shaking his head. “It was fine.” He blinks. “I thought of you.”

Aziraphale bites his lip, gives a little gasp and Crowley swallows it, he needs to be kissing him,  _ now _ . 

“I thought of  _ you _ ,” the angel tells him, wrenching off his own clothes, hardly fumbling with the want of it, and Crowley believes him. “I thought of you, my darling, you beautiful  _ fucking  _ creature, and I’ve wanted this, and if you want it too,”  _ want is too weak a word for what this is I have for you, _ “I need you, I need you a thousand times.”

“Take me,” Crowley moans, utterly lost in it, “take me,  _ take care of me _ , I’m  _ yours _ .” 

Aziraphale gives a moan as ragged as the torn up bits of Crowley’s own heart, cacophonous inside him,  _ take care of me,  _ tugs at buttons and hems until they’re bare before each other, hot flesh on flesh,  _ yes, now _ . 

But then, when the staunch fact of it splays undeniable, something asks Aziraphale to  _ slow down,  _ not Crowley, he’s still cradled in  _ do what you want with me, take me apart _ , it’s something in the space between them, frissoned with passion but far too sacred to rush. Careful kisses now, down this jaw and that chest, memorizing taste and pressure and what parts of you make you curl up to me, show me how to love you best.

Here is your hip, I’ve dreamt of it, yes, this cushioned space to the side of your hard want, the obvious sort I can’t wait to take into my mouth, this expanse of you. It means you’re unclothed, it means you’re bare to me, and here it is at last beneath my palm.

Here is your chest, plush and covered in this angeldown the color of your hair, just as I imagined, scratching against the plank of mine. 

Crowley’s kissing him, and kissing him and there’s hands and thighs and a soft stomach gentling over his.

_ “Oh,  _ is that how this feels,” Crowley’s voice is softer than it’s ever been, “I get to do this now.” A smile, a graze of teeth, hands crossing a new space on his chest,  _ all of me feels new when you touch me,  _ “I get to kiss you when I want to. I get to want you,” a mouth at his throat, a low moan, a wandering hand, “and then you take me. S’gonna take some getting used to, love.” 

“We’ve got time.” And they do, a greatglorious expanse of it, the future suddenly gleaming with possibilities of together, together, and Crowley lets out a sound like a sob and holds him so tight,  _ fucking finally _ . “What do you want, my darling?”

Everything, all of it, whatever you would do with me.

_ Ask him properly, for fuck’s sake. _

“Would you —” a silly faltering, when Crowley’s this far gone, and the angel grins at this because he  _ knows _ what’s coming next. Crowley steadies himself, go on, “Fuck. Aziraphale, I want you inside of me.”

The grin slips gently off his face. Something replaces it, something giddy but intense.

“You want me to fuck you, darling?” the words come quiet, and a blade of arousal sears up between Crowley’s legs all the way up his spine. 

“Yes,” he hisses. Take this skinnybone ashscrap of me. Turn me into something new. Give it to me. “If you’re interested.”

Aziraphale gives an incredulous noise, his eyebrows raising as he lets his gaze rake over Crowley’s body, lets his hands follow, touching him everywhere, lingering,  _ don’t let an inch of me go without your touch, please, transform it all, I’m yours.  _

“Of course I’m bloody interested,” says the angel, and his mouth is against Crowley’s again, a touchstone kiss before it moves to his throat, his chest, below. “I want you to know,” and this is spoken from the base of Crowley’s stomach, and Crowley looks down to see that cream-lovely face pink and panting by the length of his own aching erection, and he arches his back in arousal and disbelief, “I have wanted to take you apart since Eden. Let myself think about it for the first time when I heard Shakespeare speak of desire, but,  _ oh _ ,” he puts his cheek to it, “I have wanted you since before want had a name.” And he swallows Crowley whole, moaning obscenely into it, and this cracks Crowley open further,  _ it’s happening _ , there’s no way for even the most self-loathing parts of him to misinterpret the ravenous hunger as the angel lets himself give and take, fist clenched at the base, sinking Crowley as far into his throat as he’ll go. Aziraphale  _ explores _ , twisting his hand, letting his fingers clutch at the soft flesh tightening below, pressing at the tender space between. He moves wondrous. He wanted this, he wants this. He pulls his mouth to the head of it and tightens and Crowley’s moan comes high in his own throat, just barely managing to keep from thrusting back up. Their eyes meet and Aziraphale gives a knowing little smirk, the bastard, before flicking out the edge of his tongue and letting it press along the slit.

_ “Ohh _ .” Crowley could come just like this, teased and taunted at the tip of him, thin fingers making a crumpled mess of the sheets, his heels scrabbling to get the angle right, but then Aziraphale swallows him down again, a chuckle vibrating against the shaft of him.

“Another time, my dear,” he promises when he pulls away at last. He pauses, and when Crowley tilts his head down in a question, Aziraphale nudges the inside of his thigh with his nose, his mouth lower now. “If I’m to fuck you, darling,” and his hot breath presses lower and Crowley gulps, the thought of the gift of this, “may I? I’m happy to use my fingers alone, if you’d prefer I --” 

Crowley tilts himself forward and the angel stops talking. He thinks for one light moment that this is a very effective way to get Aziraphale to shut up once in a while, and then there’s that hot hungry tongue pressing against him,  _ into _ him, and all thoughts leave him except for how good it feels. His thighs against the angel’s soft cheeks, his hands going past his own aching erection to bury into cloudspun curls, pull Aziraphale closer, deeper into him. Somewhere distant, from behind his clenchedshut eyelids, he hears a weak, desperate sort of keening, and he registers that it’s coming from his own mouth, but  _ oh _ , he’s too preoccupied with Aziraphale’s to care. A tongue run around the rim of him, drawing him open, wet and soft, and  _ fuck _ , he could come like this too. The want lived so long just beneath his skin, mere moments of Aziraphale’s mouth coax it to the surface.

Aziraphale notices this too. He pulls away. He licks his lips, doesn’t wipe them, and Crowley’s cock gives a  _ very _ noticeable twitch. Aziraphale smiles, but he’s panting now, palming his own thick cock.

“I am going to bring you off every way you ever wanted,” a kiss pressed into his mouth,  _ oh _ , he can taste himself there, those fingers come to stroke his hair, and Crowley’s in a daze of it, the best fucking daze of his life, constantly reminding himself his dreams, quite literally, are coming true. “But for our first time, I want to be inside you for it. I want -- I want to feel you come around me.”

Crowley  _ moans _ , long limbs wrapping around the curves of him,  _ come here then _ , “ _ please _ , angel, yes, I want it, I want you inside me --” 

Aziraphale pushes his thighs back, Crowley’s snakethin hips letting them go further than they should. He loops one arm around Crowley’s shoulders, makes a pillow of himself, then brings two tentative fingers up to Crowley’s mouth. Crowley takes them in on instinct,  _ how long have I _ ,  _ oh _ , sucks them slick, a new communion and this one doesn’t burn. The angel’s mouth falls open and Crowley’s barely had time to revel in the taste of those powderwhite fingers, thick and lovely, before Aziraphale pulls them away, covers Crowley’s mouth in a kiss and lets those same thick fingers press into him.

Crowley arches into the touch, the ache of it nothing compared to, “ _ oh, you’re inside me, yes, yes,”  _ his thighs pulled back even more, a contortion of himself,  _ I want you to have the most of me. _

“Is this all right, darling?” a soft question, spoken tenderly, torn with want. The fingers push tentative but deep, sinking into him. “How does it feel?”

“Incredible,” Crowley manages, hoarse, “oh, I can’t wait any longer, Aziraphale, but -- ” he’s just thought of this, with the angel knuckledeep in him, this stupid logistical nonsense that  _ could  _ be miracled, but he has to ask for it because the angel  _ will _ realize, and his face has gone quite pink, but not as pink as Aziraphale’s, when he removes his fingers, reaches into the drawer of the bedside table on his previously untouched side of the bed which Crowley had  _ perfectly reasonably  _ assumed was empty, and pulls out a full bottle of lubricant.

“I’d hoped!” he says, defensive, popping it open, and Crowley’s eyes crinkle in a smile. No, there’s no going back now. He’d  _ hoped.  _ Brought fucking lube to the cottage, the damned darling. Oh, this will be a good life after all, won’t it.

“I love you,” Crowley says simply, and Aziraphale kisses him, smiling again, but with one hand slick with lube now, stroking himself, and Crowley can’t wait any longer, pulls his thighs back and bites his lip.

“Oh,  _ love _ ,” Aziraphale breathes, and there’s one more question in his eyes and Crowley answers with a nod and a very embarrassing sound at the back of his forlorn throat, but it’s nothing compared to the sound he makes when Aziraphale enters, breaching him, making a rift out of him where there had been something unbroken, there’s holystuff inside him now, Aziraphale’s cock is actually hard for him, in him, and fuck, it feels better than it should.

“Fuck,” says the angel, and Crowley grins so stupidly fond through his haze of fresh touch and aching arousal. “You feel  _ good _ .”

“ _ You  _ feel good,” Crowley gasps back at him, “you feel  _ so  _ good,” better than that, but words aren’t coming to him anymore, he’s blissfully free from those approximations, there is only his body bending the bed and the pressure inside him as Aziraphale begins to move, to thrust, to draw himself out and fill Crowley up again, and oh, it feels like the  _ fuckingfinally  _ of a bestowing.

“Oh my darling, my love, I want to make you feel good, you feel so good around me, let’s be together, please, stay with me, stay with me, you’re wonderful.” Aziraphale hasn’t lost his words. No, they’re spilling from his mouth and Crowley drinks from them like he’s been dying of thirst, deep thrust and this praise, he thinks  _ I am not worthy _ and the angel tells him again and again,  _ don’t say that, of course you are. _

Pressed up together, the thousand places touching alight between them, he’s set ablaze. Not the fire of fall or anything destroyed, but part of remaking, Crowley  _ remembers  _ this, the neuron flare of it, the clash of chaos he knit together to make light and matter dance across the void, and here it is again,  _ in the softness on the inside of your wrist, the wet heft between your thighs, that slips between mine. Your mouth a hot comet on the plane of my chest. _ The thrill of creation, a shattering. This is what it must mean to be consecrated. 

_ I have faith in nothing, but you. And if you want me, if there is an us, then you have answered my wildest prayers. _

“Please, darling, if you’d like to, if you can, let me,” and Aziraphale wraps his hand around Crowley’s wet cock, strokes him sure and frantic, leans himself deeper, crying out, the tops of his thighs against the inside of Crowley’s, and Crowley knows Aziraphale’s close, he’s getting rougher, his eyes slitted open, sweaty locks of hair fallen into his face, but he keeps up his pace, his hand and his hips, and Crowley digs his fingers into Aziraphale’s thighs, pulling him so deep he could choke on it, eyes rolling back, lights like stars erupting behind them, these snakelike things that made them once. Aziraphale sobs, his hand quickening,  _ I’m doing that, me, my body’s bringing you here _ , Crowley’s always wanted everything from the angel and this is more than he ever thought he’d get and greedy, magpielike, coiling, he wants all of it, as much as he can take. 

“Do it, my love,” his voice not a hiss but a breathy high thing, this remade too, “I’m so close, fill me up,” and when the angel releases into him, a hot and helpless spilling, Crowley gives himself over to the relentless curl and hand, his own hands not on himself but on Aziraphale, it’s all Aziraphale, bringing this scream of pleasure to him, and somewhere in the mess of him Crowley marvels, after so many generations of pining, a balance here, at last.

And when Aziraphale pulls out of him, caring not a whit for the mess ( _ don’t clean it up yet, please. I like the stain of us here, I’m not ready to let it go until I know there’s a next time. I know there will be, now. Be patient with me _ ). They gather each other into their arms, blurry smiles and sticky embrace and the promise, a promise that there’s no need to let go. There’s heat still here but it’s a hearth, that gentle thing, a blossoming thing reaching up from soil to sun,  _ you alongside me, growing together, together.  _ Nothing of a wreck here. 

“I love you, you know.”

“I don’t, yet.”

“ _ Crowley _ .”

“Be patient with me, angel.” He burrows into the sweat of this soft throat, nuzzles into curls, and Aziraphale holds him tighter,  _ yes _ , even now. “I’ll get there. If you let me.”

“I’m here, my love. We’ve begun. Take your time. Our pace is ours. There’s no rush here. We can do it, and we’re going to, because I want to, and so do you.” 

The angel is pulling the comforter over them. It’s tartan. It’s soft, and he gets it arranged and then smiles that crush of a smile again, and  _ Crowley, Crowley, nothing here is ruined _ .

“I love you too, Aziraphale,” and the name, spoken here, brings it another step further, and Aziraphale knows this. The smile broadens. They’re in each other’s arms again, and Crowley feels like at last, there’s rest to be had here. 

He waits for Aziraphale to pull away. To give a clipping sigh, and remind Crowley (he doesn’t need to be reminded) that he doesn’t care much for sleep, press a kiss to his forehead and tell him he’ll see him in the morning. It would have been enough. 

Instead, there’s the gentle brush of that mouth making constellations of shoulderfreckles Crowley didn’t know he had.  _ You remake me _ . The impossibly affectionate run of fingers through a river of red hair. A cushion of a chest and round thighs and nothing at all of the night, but  _ oh _ , Crowley lets himself imagine it’s a whisper of eternity nonetheless.

And somehow, as he feels himself shifting to the coziest sleep of his long life, he feels the angel’s hand slow, hears the breathing deepen, lets the sleepless angel slump in sleep against him.  _ At last, at last, my love, there’s rest to be had here for us both. _

_____________  
  


A season passes, and then the next and the next, and the cottage feels more like heaven than anything anywhere ever did. 

This, then is the aftermath. But it’s not, is it? It’s the earlymorning stretch of things, it’s a beginning, I want a whole middle with you, the scrumptious  _ boredom  _ of it. Give me everyday squabbles, me letting the tea go cold, your refusal to listen to anything less dignified than a sonata or Sondheim (for someone’s sake), give me an unmade bed and a cold floor on winter mornings, grassstains wore into checkered picnic blankets, the stifling sun of summer. Give me every day of you and me, bumping up against each other, learning to dance. I’m tired of trying to be celestial, and if you don’t smell the rot of sulfur lingering on me (you tell me you don’t, often, and I’m starting to believe you) let’s walk together, please,  _ please _ , somewhere in the middle.

_ We used to balance in a sore way, pummelling each other, a broken mirror, the neverreach of sea and sky, stretching, orbiting, a binary system. Now, though. You teach me that love is an equilibrium, and I don’t know exactly how, but I think I’m teaching you, too.  _

Crowley doesn’t mind the night, now. He still goes to the clearing sometimes. There’s someone to come with him, clutching at his mug of tea, bundling the two of them together in a fluffy tartan comforter. 

“Tell me about your favorite stars to make.” 

And when Crowley does, it’s not painful, to relive what he was once, because he’s here now, making this, and if this is what it took fuck the rest. It  _ worked _ . The stars they see are dead. Make stories out of them, it’s all they’re good for. This, this here, the soil we till and your face in the mornings, this is what matters.

And in the days they go out together, down the tottering hills, to where the sand meets the sea meets the sky. All grey, but for the thin line of earth between. An unassuming thing, filled with all the life in the world, and their love, too. They linger, in the equinox.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading <3
> 
> check out my other a/c fics (both fluff & smut), and follow me on tumblr at letmetemptyou!
> 
> with all of my gratitude to drawlight: for your goddamn otherworldly words. for the inspiration that gets mine closer to where i want them to go.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [variations on a theme (wine-dark)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20126113) by [CCs_World](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CCs_World/pseuds/CCs_World)
  * [equinox [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20436857) by [originblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/originblue/pseuds/originblue)


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